Tuesday, December 31, 2002

12.31.2

there was more light yesterday than the day before. things are looking up.

of course the darkness has it�s own imperatives, but enough is enough.

i wonder how the first human consciousness felt when he or she realized that it was a �new� (another) year.

i imagine remorse and relief were part of it.

maybe indifference?

for me, what�s different about the new year is what i learned during the old one:

i don�t know anyone who gets a good night�s sleep anymore.

if people have souls, and i think they do, there are twice as many souls on earth today as when i was a teenager. (thanks to mike e. for that encouraging tidbit.)

if they do or don�t, there are still twice as many humans present.

philip k. dick called this age �the iron castle�. i call it, after ken wilber, �the age of the descended grid�. both phrases seem to have the same quality: caged.

if a person becomes more conscious, does he or she become less unconscious? or is the unconscious infinite and therefor endless and therefor never �less�?

tv the other night: rhythm, song and dance preceded language. louis mumford conjectured as much.

the image preceded conceptual thought.

in the human story, what does conceptual thought precede?

does the universe include dead-ends?

if there is a spirit of creation it is prior to and the basis of human experience. does it talk to us? can we talk to it?

is it accurate to refer to this world as �the vale of tears�? or is it a secular sin to think so negatively? (power of positive thinking). or is it that way so we can contribute to �soul-making�? (keats and james hillman).

everyone i run across these days, admittedly a skewed sample, seems to feel the power of �that�s all folks.�

kali yuga indeed.

so the only reason i look forward to the new year is that the old one is over. i hope and pray.

Sunday, December 29, 2002

12.29.2

another wierd end to another wierd year. woke up this morning intending to go to friends meeting at 10, but blood sugar was 496. stayed in 400s till around noon when i finaly changed the old infusion set which looked ok. successfully began to lower BG. meanwhile i'm feeling muzzy, fuzzy, nauseous, and sick.

did not quite phone 911, but came close.

later the reitzals and elvins dropped by unexpectedly and i had a short but very pleasant visit. lots to guess about the coming year. i think i'll start a cyber-pool as to when what happens happens during 2003, and when it doesn't.

Friday, December 27, 2002

12.27.5

today the plan is to - again - stay at home. take it easy. be a blur. stress reduction.

started an oil portrait last night that didn't even come close and now looks like the underpainting of the mexican dust bowl. i'm going to add a watercolor today and see what happens if i work on both at once.

with a little luck i'll start loading new site. talk to a bird. finish final edit of poetry book to be. dance. pick up photo prints i took somewhere. the mundane can save us all.

Thursday, December 26, 2002

12.26.2

i now have 448 Meg of memory. next a big fast firewire hard drive, for which i'll also need firewire/usb pci card. the usb is to hook up a digital camera.

i woke up today with the best of intentions, but had to finish a complicated audio piece, so i could blow away all of the digital audio parts and reclaim 350 meg memory.

i accomplished this task around 7 tonight.

i don't take this as a good sign. but maybe it is. ordinary life.

if you're interested in looking at or contributing anti-war (don't you just hate that name?) advertising scripts, take a look:

ActionForum

Here's an ad, in RealAudio format (a 178K download), that will be playing in january i think. i don't think it gets to the heart of the matter.

and last:

"It would be interesting to see if there's a correlation between the meteoric rise of blogging, the practice of keeping a frequently-updated online journal, and the rise of unemployment in Silicon Valley and other tech corridors."

from www.washingtonpost.com.

Wednesday, December 25, 2002

12.25.2

thax sam

well i'm not running and i'm not hiding but it's not christmas anymore. i guess cause it's the day after in 30 minutes.

no resolutions - i already (didn't) do them.

i guess i guess that i will pay more attention to focus in the next year, or maybe focus on attention more.

That's if nothing comes up to distract me, like the world and stuff.

which world? why, all of them. so far.

and while we're on the subject i insist you go to ken nordeen wordjazz site. listen to first archived radio program. in my opinion he's right up there with picasso and dylan.

Monday, December 23, 2002

12.23.2

for those of you not on the mailing list:

x marks the spot

Sunday, December 22, 2002

12.22.2

here is the solution to the cryptogram my aunt patricia did while i was in arizona:

"just be glad you're not getting the government you're paying for."
-will rogers

a thought for the day. any day.

Saturday, December 21, 2002

12.21.2

beautiful light out, brisk. i could live in this weather for the rest of my life - but hope i don't.

and i haven't even been out in it yet.

still straightening out email. i hope i got what you sent.

for those of you wondering how to communicate with the over-world, or if it is even possible, this might be worth a try.

Thursday, December 19, 2002

12.19.2

beautiful day visitng my friend sam outside marion. cleared my head a little.

cyber-deck status: changeable. today i cannot reply to email. i did fix blog archive link. also wrestling with stylewriter II problem, will not print justified text from quark. will from word.

gonna step back and taker easy.

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

12.18.2

still connecting the dots on my cyber-deck, uh, i mean mac. and this site. i started it a year or two ago to see what would happen, or more specifically to see what it might turn into. so far i'm still wondering.

went to friends meeting last sunday. i like the group silence, but it looks like to really be a member you would have to attend endless meetings. and i'm allergic to endless meetings. nonetheless it is somehow comforting to know there is still social activism happening.

years ago i gave neuromancer by william gibson to my son eli. he recently read it and i took it - light weight paperback - on recent journey and reread it.

i remembered 2 things: 1) the girl with the fingernails that extend into razors (how could you forget?); and 2) a sentence about the place where the corporate intersects with the street. something i did not remember is that for a book with such a sprawling canvas, so many scenes and places, the government is not mentioned once. no politics. too much important stuff going on. with the current disconnect between the government and the governed, this might foreshadow the near future. my aunt patricia did a cryptogram in arizona that relates to this which i'll post when i find it.

Tuesday, December 17, 2002

12.17.2

busy day doing nothing. well, maybe i did somethings necessary to the mundane - in the best sense of the word. still hooking up all the contraptions that make this site work. laundry. editing. library. bank. drug store.

an encouraging note of interest: at recent family reunion in tuscon, there were about 100 family members i think plus friends etc. now without going into particulars i think it would be fair to say that most of these folks are hardcore western republicans. of course we are all older and slower and less fiery in opinions, but i still find it interesting that even though we avoided political discussion, just about all of them were very much bothered by bush and his pet war. nobody liked it. maybe a heavy-weight or two, but the concensus seemed to be "say whaaaat?"

even more wierd is that nobody seemed to know anyone that voted for him. or admitted that they had.

reinforces my theory that there has been a coup d'etat in washington dc but no one knows because it's a secret.

12.17.2

my state of mind. and i think the state of mind of that unholy abstraction, joe public:

numb

12.17.2

progress. just escaped arizona library by techno-wizardry. and i think i can now post to this page. so this is a

test

12.17.2

just got up. still cannot post to this extravaganza. going to bed at 8-9, my rule for waking up is if NPR is on the radio it's 5 AM or after so i'm up. before than the BBC is on and i just roll over. i seem to be in the midst of reconnecting with quite a crew of old old friends but my web site is stuck in prescott az. can't update it - yet.

this is the first year in many years, maybe 15, that i haven't made my own xmas cards.

m,lkj <=== from my kat miss kitty.

Monday, December 16, 2002

1`2.16.2

maaan i'm tired. so tired. i wanna go to bed. but...
to be continued

Friday, December 13, 2002

12.13.2

ok i am back in aville but due to incredibly complicated server migration i cannot FTP to this blog, therefor you cannot see this posting. right now. soon, i'm told.

so i'm just going to keep on posting and someday you'll see this.

within the month most likely i'll have redesigned site somewhere else, will keep you posted.

i figured out this AM that i was home a total of 6 or 9 days - i forget - during nov 12 - dec 12. some hard traveling, esp with 3 fractured ribs. had a nice civil thanksgiving with the aycocks and 3 children, 1 grandchild.

this was the first thanksgiving in many years that we did not gather at sally's, my ex-wife and children's mother. she passed away last january. so it was especially kind for the aycock's to have us over. no fiends like old friends. [typo - i'll leave it in.]

then i spent some time at the Meher Spiritual center in myrtle beach SC. while i was there i found a st christopher medal that i had lost. it was the only piece i have of my mother's, and they were getting ready to take contents of lost and found box to goodwill the same day i started looking. i feel good about wearing this medallion around my neck because i remember it hanging from rear view mirror as a kid, and 6 months at the center comes with some blessing i am sure.

more about trip later, especially as you won't see this until later.

meanwhile a little bit about my latest obsession - one of the few artists of the century who i would put in the same league as picasso, bob dylan, ricci (the director of koyonaskatsi). on the list of links to the left click on ken nordine - wordjazz, and listen to the first 30 minute radioshow. yes, 30 minutes, the same time wheel of jeapordy takes.

Wednesday, December 11, 2002

12.11.2

Back in Aville

Wednesday, December 4, 2002

12.4.2

i am in prescott arizona at the public library. totally unable to access email. my ISP, ioa.com must be in terminal stages of tech implosion and i will be changing all this when i return home. so if you are emailing me, i haven't gotten it yet.

i hear big ice storm is hitting western carolina. hope my cat doesn't freeze.

headline on phoenix paper this am:

CIA can kill bad guys

or something like that. and bad guys, as i understand it, are decleared to be bad by prez. can't blame republicans, they are just doing what they've always done, whatever they can get away with. the democrats are clones. blame the public, you and me, for letting this fantasy continue. or don't because we are anesthetised:

just say "numb".

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

11.27.2

We're Gone for Two Weeks
It's a mean looking gray day, snowing somewhere nearby. i'm entering the Dysfunctional Holiday Zone in a few minutes. the road. won't be back until around dec. 12, so of course Modern Peasant will be hibernating, approximating homeostasis for a short spell.

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

11.26.2

i dunno if it's the changing seasons, weather or light, my internal biorythms are changing from getting up at 5 or 6 to (lately) 10 or 11.

today i'll pack and load truck. i am going to make an effort to reallytravel light.

and don't forget what's upon us right now: in addition to everything we know wobbling around, there is this: (i wonder if you can get a t shirt from them?)
Wired News: You Better Shop Around -- Not!

Monday, November 25, 2002

11.25.2

boathouse

Lagoon Boathouse

running around trying to get packed and ready for 2 week trip to chapel hill, warrington NC, and tucson az.

Sunday, November 24, 2002

11.24.2

just finished a small volume of paintings and some very interesting commentary by lyn ott, In Quest of the Face of God. i met lyn in the 60's, and am thankful for the conversations i had with him. he died a while back. in some ways his paintings have become part of my universe. he was a painter who lost his sight.

"Man has no real work. He is at best a pilgrim on his way to the beloved. His only task is the quest for the face of god. All real work is done by the father, the creator of all that is. Man makes his work as the imitation of the creator.This imitation becomes the reflection of the creator. Being the reflection, it pleases the creator, and that act of pleasing is called Art."

Friday, November 22, 2002

11.22.2

Nov. 22 - anniversary of kennedy assassination. watched Washington week in review, and the panel members recalled their memories of that day, or ""where were you when...?"

where they were was grade school, grades 3 through 6 I think. once more I was floored by time's time. personally I can hardly remember grades 3 -6, only an image here and there, a few events in a small world.

Nov. 22 '62 I was in Paris, France with a Swedish girlfriend named "Gabrielle", she was 19, and an American acquaintance, jack smith. jack was from Wyoming and his father was a banker who had made him a banker. he was maybe 35. he had taken a sabbatical from the bank biz to "find himself", which involved learning French and how to smoke kif. we all 3 lived in Tours and studied at a small institute there. we were in Paris for the weekend, about 2 1/2 drizzly hours in a deux-chevaux.

we had just been to a concert at a small theater, string quartet. after the concert, walking down the crowded streets - must have been 9 PM or thereabouts, we all noticed a man walking towards us holding an open newspaper in front of him and reading it. the front page appeared to be all white space with a huge centered headline:

KENNEDY
ASSASINE

(imagine a whatchamacallit accent over the final "E").

it was such a strange layout that we managed fairly easily to regard it as one of those joke newspapers where you can roll your own. about 45 minutes later we knew it was real.

stayed up all night wondering around and wondering what was happening. two incidents stand out. one was we were eating soup in les halles when this party of 4 to 6 rich texans were seated nearby. they were loaded and loud and you couldn't help but hear them. they had just arrived from USA that day and were laughing and joking about Kennedy's death. making toasts. honest.

the second was about 5 in the am when we were accosted by a drunk Frenchman who was some kind of communist and wanted to fight. with that exception all the French were stunned and sad. draped notre-dame in black. watched the funeral parade on black and white TV in shop window. crying in cafes and bars.

end of story. now for something totellment differant:

The critical flaw in the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), which provide database access for Windows software platforms, can enable an attacker to run any code, gain control of networked databases and possibly use hijacked machines to launch denial-of-service attacks.
MS Patches Windows Flaw, But IE Hole Still Gapes

Thursday, November 21, 2002

11.21.2

here is most of the story of my present condition. last week i drove to chapel hill for my grand daugter lily's 5th birthday. she showed me 3 brand new kittens tucked away with mother kat in the laundry room. it was kind of tight in there, and i lost my balance, fell against the sharp corner of a wooden shelf. thought i might have bruised ribs so i put ice on it.

in the morning i drove to myrtle beach to the Baba center for some rest, relaxation, and contemplation. got lost on the way and had a tough time with the steering wheel. i gave it a few days and it just got worse, to the point of had to sleep in a chair.

so i turned myself in to a walk-in medical clinic where x-rays revealed i had 3 cracked ribs. some pain medication and an extra day or two, then made the long drive back across SC to aville NC - home. barbar k., who also was visiting the center needed a ride because she had her car totaled by 18 wheeler at the gate.

moral of story? still working on that.

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

11.19.2

dark country

painted last week

good to be back home. i'm about halfway through God Speaks by Meher Baba. i promised myself i would read it this year. i guess i'll finish it in time. also promised myself i'd read the bible but - oops - i'm only a couple of books into the old testament. also reading sex ecology and spirituality by ken wilber. 800 pager i think.

the rest of the week will be tech stuff: need to get quadra 650 up and running, install new modem. finish an old watercolor with water-soluable oils. and on and on.

and on.

meanwhile here's a bit of good news for wintel users:
First Virus Unable To Spread Through Microsoft Outlook

Monday, November 18, 2002

11.18.2

ok it's monday, i'm back in town. funny things going on with ISP, will straighten them out tommorrow when i can think straight - i hope. i'll be switching the location of this site, stay tuned.

my trip: fractured 3 ribs looking at grandaughter lily's new kittens. pleasant and productive time at Meher center. it rained so i couldn't do watercolors. discovered camper leaks a little so must get out the old caulk gun.

got a 450 page manuscript from jeff w. which i'll be laying out for pre-press, 100's of photos to scan etc. friend barbara k. totaled her car, she's ok, delayed return a day to give her a ride back to aville.

also got a xerox copy of book, out of print, which old friend dick anthony co-wrote with ken wilber - (thanks heddie).

tommorrow will begin process of transferring site, if i can untangle the switch my ISP has already begun.

meanwhile for those of you who suffer the new universal condition of insomnia, this might help:
insomniacs home page

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

11.12.2

modern peasant will be out of town
back next monday

Sunday, November 10, 2002

11.10.2

it's sunday and i went to church. at least i think it's a church, better known as friend's meeting - quakers. i've been trying to make a sunday sevice for weeks now, attracted by the idea of no preaching, no ranting, no polite protestant homilies.

i really liked it and will be making it part of my weekly routine. the 45-55 minutes of silent contemplation went by in a flash. silence is so quiet.

interesting observation pointed out to me by marsha in myrtle beach. i haven't looked at the rest of the stuff at this site, but this piece is very much influenced by ken wilber, who is well worth checking into:
Paradigms and the Power of Vertical Thinking by Tom Russell

Thursday, November 7, 2002

11.7.2

i took the redo of the picture below away. i couldn't see which one was the real one until this am. sometimes artists wobble.

about the 'lection: i was disappointed, had hoped that somehow bush and friends would have failed at fooling the pipple, but noooooo... didn't happen.

what has happened is i believe a sort of "official" stamp on the 50/50 grouping of the pipple. this has been brewing since last election, "the nation is divided down the middle" etc.

divided into what? right-wing conservitive ideologues who have never read calhoun or pitt. conventional. they like a figurehead who reflects their feelings on emotions, image and style - appearence - as litmus test for leadership. they think of the family unit as the basic social building block - and yet their vicious darwinian economics only let's the wealthy easily maintain the family. looked up to are the "movers and shakers". they have very little feel for the marginalized, in fact do not recognize or see them.

the other 50% are "left-wing liberals". for over half the elections i have voted in, this description has been the kiss of death. as it was this week. big government that helps the needy, suspicious that the role of business is to make money for the few. maybe making a fetish out of "diversity" when it only exists in the social realm and is fast disappearing in the mental realm.

personally i think we are lucky that the split is 50-50. it at least means no one will be knocking on my door in the middle of the night. yet.

i have recently instituted a custom in my house which keeps me aware of this split. in the living room NPR plays softly on the radio, reasonable discussions on little known phenomena, a slightly raised level of discourse. in my work room - refuse to call it an "office" - the am radio crackles with a whole host of talk shows lorded over by curdled, indignant, self-styled right-wingers, whose manner is vitriolic and superior.

and to think this division is obsolete, anachronistic, shallow, and has very little to do with the way we experience life today.

Monday, November 4, 2002

11.4.2

election booth

i'm inside a booth. a cold sensitive tooth. i think i have to vote. someone left a note.

Sunday, November 3, 2002

11.3.2

midterm elections crescendo. the winter of our disconnect. politics = entertainment. public discouse captured by a �circle-the-wagons� mentality.

more and more build-up of the false domain, the place where nobody really lives. ads etc. first election cycle about absolutely nothing, i mean nothing in the absolute sense. all of the "issues" and "white papers" and "polls" and "debates" are patently unreal. or not real enough - (read "the image" by boorstein).

don't get me wrong: i'm going to vote: straight democratic as a protest to the invisible transfer of power - psuedo coup d'etat - taking place right now. we don't know about it because it's a aecret.

we do know madonna's current breast size. we know oj was guilty.

the domain of the conventional public known things is under no one's control right now. anyway not mine.

so the conversation about this world is not an easy or comfortable one, and there is that constant thought: politics isn't worth it - or i'm too busy to vote.

which i am. i only vote as a ritual, an obeiscence towards the time we used to talk.

Thursday, October 31, 2002

10.32.2

email fowarded by tucker:

----------------------------------------->

"October 30, 2002

To: Charlton Heston, President, NRA
From: Michael Moore, Winner, NRA Marksman Award
Subject: Your Visit to Tucson Today in the Wake of Another School Shooting

Dear Mr. Heston:

When you showed up in Denver to hold your pro-gun rally just days after the
massacre at nearby Columbine High School, the nation was shocked at your
incredible insensitivity to those who had just lost loved ones.

When you came to Flint to hold another rally in the months after a 6-year
old boy shot a 6-year old girl at a nearby elementary school, the community
was stunned by your desire to rub its face in its grief.

But your announcement that you are on your way to Tucson today, just 48
hours after a student at the University of Arizona shot and killed three
professors and then himself, to hold ANOTHER big pro-gun celebration --
this time to get out the vote for the NRA-backed Republican running for
Congress -- well, sir, I have to ask you: Have you no shame?

I am asking that you not go to Tucson today. Do not cause any more grief,
any more pain. Let the relatives and friends of the deceased mourn. Why
show up to play the role of the bully, kicking these good people when they
are down, just so you can prove that you have a right to your big, bad
guns? These are not the actions of a once brave and decent man. They are
the acts of a coward, as no man of courage would think of picking on his
fellow citizens when they are so consumed with tragedy.

Obviously, you couldn't care less. Because to you, The Gun is supreme --
and wherever it is used to kill multiple people (preferably at a school),
there shall we find you gloating about some misbegotten right you think you
have to own a device that is designed to eliminate human life.

Well, Mr. Heston, this time I think you have crossed the line. I hope that
your efforts as a gun supremacist -- you are now, I understand, in the
middle of a 12-state tour to help elect Republicans -- backfire on you in
the surest way that it can: total rejection of you, the NRA, and the
candidates you back come next Tuesday. The American people have had enough.


To the people of Tucson and the students at the University of Arizona, I am
so sorry for the tragedy you have suffered, and I feel terribly sad that
you will have to endure the sight of Charlton Heston and his gun nuts
today. Take some solace in knowing that your fellow Americans by an
overwhelming margin want tough gun laws -- and that the day of obtaining
them is not far away. There is one small way to make sure Heston and the
NRA are stopped in their tracks -- just check out the website of the man
(http://www.grijalva2002.com/) they have come to Tucson to defeat. Let them
pack their guns -- we will pack the polls!

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mike@michaelmoore.com"

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

10.30.2

found this in a water color magazine:

"the 20th century is, among other things, the Age of Noise...spoken or printed, broadcast over the ether or on wood-pulp, all advertising copy has one purpose - to prevent the will from ever achieving silence. desirelessness is the condition of deliverance and illuminatiiion. the condiition of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving. advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify the workings of that force, which (as all the saints and teachers of all the higher religions have always taught) is the principal cause of suffering and wrong-doing and the greatest obstacle between the human soul and it's divine ground."

aldous huxley in 1946.

oops gotta go the telephone is ringing.

Sunday, October 27, 2002

10.27.2

the sun also sets

last watercolor i finished. couple of days ago. begun in prescott az. and no, it doesn't look like the locale.

and now sunday's sermon from brother ken wilber:

"Likewise, looking deep within the mind, in the very most interior part of the self, when the mind becomes very, very quite, and one listens very carefully, in that infinite silence, the soul begins to whisper, and its feather-soft voice takes one far beyond what the mind could ever imagine, beyond anything rationality could possibly tolerate, beyond anything logic can endure. In its gentle whisperings, there are the faintest hints of infinite love, glimmers of a life that time forgot, flashes of a bliss that must not be mentioned, an infinite intersection where the mysteries of eternity breathe life into mortal time, where suffering and pain have forgotten how to
pronounce their own names, this secret quiet intersection of time and the very timeless, an intersection called the soul. "

-- Integral Psychology , p. 106.

Saturday, October 26, 2002

10.26.2

one more saturday night.

the last time i heard the greatful dead, they played the song of the same name. and it was one more sat. nite. at the whatever it's called outdoor pavilion in phoenix, that stale hot sweltering summer night air, the band seemed small, miniature and cramped on the far away stage, and all kinds of young people holding bags of shake and enthusing how good the band was playing.

dunno if you ever saw "mad dogs & englishman" concert film with leon russell and joe cocker but the ambience was the same: trash scattered all over, sleaze running rampant, pressure, crowds, dismal lights winking in the distance: the dream was over, long since cancelled and shredded.

so why write about this now? well, it is one more saturday nite and i have that depleted, enervated and hopeless feeling that i must have made a few wrong turns somewhere. and not just me. all of us.

paul wellstone is dead. the only memeber of congress who seemed to live in the same world as i do. hopefully ben jones might be another one. and not to speculate, but why did that kingair crash on vfr landing? no smoke, no fire, just headed in the wrong direction.

the sniper extravaganza re-introduced me to late-nite AM radio. unbelievable. the o'reilly factor ("no-spin") was bad enough but his schtick seems to be curdled indignance with the media, so he scores some points. course his idea of discourse is yelling at the caller and then cutting him or her off.

but somebody named savage takes the booby prize. this guy went on for hours about how chief moose had an accent (like black accent?) and therefore should not be in a position of authority. "speak the king's english" he ranted and raved over and over. what he was speaking, stylistically speaking, doesn't have a name yet - that i am aware of - but rush limbaugh is the origion of this smug, intolerant, vituprative dialect, subtext violence, that seems to be spreading.

i got a chinese er-hu, 2 string chinese fiddle from friend barbara who spent time in china and has just returned. when i was 10-11 yrs old i lived in the southern part of tainan taiwan and these things were all over. i used to play them just for the hell of it, probably because the us govt couldn't get a school together for american dependants so i wondered around the city and countryside day after day, drinking tea and smoking cigerettes in the red light district which was full of elegant mahogany wood columns, spent a lot of time in huge temple comlex a few miles outside of town, giant statues of wrathful dieties pulling swords, pogodas full of ceramic vases holding cremation ashes, and the occaisional catacomb loaded with guns and ammo, still packed in grease.

and you wonder why i'm crazy? for the same reason you are. for some mysterious reason - to us - the spirit beyond the beyond has put us here to experience this craziness and suffering for the purpose of involution, or as plato put it "remembering" who we really is.

only i don't remember. i don't even remember 4th grade.

the push seems to be towards the state where our thoughts and emotional life are looked on like we look at the sky and trees. effortless attention. naked awareness.

only it is not easy to do this. personally - oops, probably wrong word - i think my thoughts etc are looked on with the same effortless attention with which i might gaze on a river at dusk.

but not by me. i vaguely remeber a japenese story where a monk announces it is like a distant momentary flash of concious light shining on him for a microsecond.

as an old fart chronologically preceeding the boomer bulge, i can feel the pressure of so many who have put in their time in the secular insanity wanting to spend what time they have left dealing with the real, or hyper-real, or supra real if you prefer. this will open up the culture to a last phase of life which is not reading the stock reports and playing golf, but practice practice practice.

i have been suprised by the role that creativity and expression seems to be taking in this regard. who was it, erikson? who posited the last phase of life as choice between creation and dissolution.

ok it's past my bedtime so i'm heading for sleep, but probably will listen to shortwave radio all night, chinese seguing into christian fundimentalism into arabic, little cubano rhythm on the side.

tommorrow i want to make a quaker service whre i understand quitness can leave room for the spirit - which may or may not make an appearance as is it's habit.

meanwhile i got a painting to finish and an electronic instrumental to finish. why? i don't know, i talked to an artist in prescott az last month and mentioned the reason i paint was mental health maintenance. he said "yea we all do."

Thursday, October 24, 2002

10.24.2

for those of us still learning this and that, MIT has an interesting idea: free courseware. they hope and so do i that this idea catches on.
MIT OpenCourseWare | Home

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

10.23.2

back online after several days of server problems. during this time i emailed an old friend who lives outside of richmond va and asked him what was going on. ensuing correspondance is below:

---------------------------------------------->

me:

just got back from marathon trip west, spent time with father who is
doing well and attended wedding of oldest son in las vegas which is
worse this century than last. can you give me the scoop on snipper
action in your parts? whassup?

chris
---------------------------------------------->

him:

whassup??

heads are down. walk in zig zag pattern. schools closed. crouch when you
pump gas. Have to go to Home Depot? send the wife.
Other advice. dont drive a white box truck or white van. if you're an
illegal mex dont stop at a suburban exxon to call home. dont get shot in
stomach for at least an hour after having eaten at steak house.
ignore cnn.
sniper is a lone gunman, is tandem duo freaked out on video games, an AArab
terrorist, an annie oakley wannabe, audie murphy in drag, the ghost of sgt.
york.
montgomery county police chief charlie moose is a UNC grad

if the bushies invade iraq and nuke north korea before the sniper is caught
or killed, no one in virgnia, maryland or dc will notice.

the cops are very close to catching the sniper or dont have a clue.

they should look for a crazy person with a gun; that's what i'd do. Doesn't
narrow the field much does it?

---------------------------------------------->


me:

hey man i've gotta post yr answer on my infamous web boondoggle. do you
mind? no names or ID, just another pilgrim's observations.

and it might help clear people's heads, or maybe they'll just shake them
sadly. "another bright idealistic young man who could have been a lawyer
ranting out in the boonies". well you got a lot of company.

me, i spent a night last week in the luxor pyramid in las vegas, all darth vader
and cheap tin replicas of hieroglyphic fragments. i found that you could
pound the latter and get some pretty spooky polyrhythms going.

we is having coup d'etat but no one knows cause it's secret. corporate
oligharchy had this in place before clinton bumbled along and setem back
8 years.

i saw tv coverage out yr way today. lady lamenting that her schedule was
upset said "i'd rather be shot than stay home".

make a nice epitaph.

---------------------------------------------->

him:

post away. with our very own sniper and with crazy arabs flying planes into
tall and five-sided buildings the corporate coup is not really very scary.
so many of the wall street and main street universe masters were clueless
enough to get caught and will go to jail, that i dont worry about them. in
fact i feel quite comfortable knowing that incompetents run the world; they
are so much less dangerous that west nile bearing birds, killer wood ticks,
mutating AIDS virsues and suicidal deer hell bent on crashing through your
windshield. and dont forget last summer's sharks, eating russian imigrants
at hatteras. life threatening danger is all very random, whether its sadam
gassing kurds (nobody likes kurds anyway including other kurds) or the
"small animal" (state police didnt say what kind of small animal) that, the
other night, caused two 18-year-old falls church girls to swerve and lose
control of their car on i-95 south of here and get whacked by a tractor
trailer. the truck also got the critter. the two girls could have just as
well stayed at home in falls church and gone shopping at home depot.

---------------------------------------------->

me:

maybe i am obsessive - probably am in addition to other mental maladies
- but i can't help thinking that some of these random always with us
problems - like colliding animal populations are another unintended
consequence of the present set of deal makers, power groupies, and
megarich celebratory personae.

life is bad enough - these guys are making it worse for no reason except
to distract themselves.

---------------------------------------------->

him:

well, thank god. our sniper has returned to montgomery county to communicate
with local authorities by killing a bus driver. take that charlie moose.
moose, of course, does not acknowlege that people are being capped on his
watch. he will concede that someone or someones are causing situations.
situations make charlie uncomfortable.

saturday we leave for hatteras for a week. chances are the our sniper wont
follow. as for sharks, i dont plan on going in the water. last saturday we
went to uva/unc football game in charlottesville with friends. the heels
rise to ever higher heights of mediocrity. leaves here are turning; ice the
other day in the dogs' water bowl. soon deer season will be upon us, the
season when i wear a blaze orange cap to walk about my woods and carry a
pistol in my pocket when i go chase off tresspassing hunters.

i hope someone has bagged the sniper by the time i return, tho i suspect we
will miss him when he's gone.

---------------------------------------------->#end of correspondance

Sunday, October 20, 2002

10.20.2

marsh

painted this at my father's house in arizona. no, the local landscape did not look like this.

i guess i've recovered from trip, bounced back to same old erratic hypomaniacal state. i remain fascinated by the immense distance between we the pipple and the corporate oligarchy.

got email from old friend geoff who opines that what is going on now was planned during first bush's reign, interupted by 8 years of clinton, and is now happening again. maybe this accounts for the hurry. what it does not explain is the numb response to economy, terror, and ragged edge so many of us now live.

Saturday, October 19, 2002

10.19.2

took a look at random blogs today - so many people with something to say. everythings been said. but not everyone has got to say it yet.

altho i love words, they seem increasingly...irrevelent. public discourse has more to do with alliteration and proximity of various words (like "political candidate" and "child molester", no kidding, ads in arizona are doing this; not saying one is the other, just making sure that the words appear close together).

personal discourse - ie the spoken word - seems to go like this:

"how is your mother?"

"fine".

"mine is in a wheelchair".

the question is a setup to talk about one's own world, not an inquiry into another's world.

can monads discuss liebnitz? or oprah for that matter?

and maybe blogs are a way to siphen off the human instinct to question and discuss, you know thw way the beatniks did last century instead of working, siphen off the wooly words into the iredescent white blast of beyond the beyond. like a prayer? naaah, more like a spell to keep away the electronic demons.

talk about sliding signifiers: what does rock star, social butterfly, coach potato, village idiot, and mainstream media mean?

ok, now what do they mean?

ok, now what do they mean?

Friday, October 18, 2002

10.18.2

Back Online

Got back from wild west and other stops a few days ago. been hiding under bed, knawing on fingernails, wondering why.

while i was away the sniper saga started. the war didn't. saw lot of political ads in arizona saying the other guy was soft on child molesters. eric & angela's wedding in las vegas was a once in a lifetime event, met lots of nice people, a few from one of my former lives.

don't have enough energy to talk about las vegas except to say i have seen the future and it winks and blinks and you have to stand in line for everything.

later: more.

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

11.25.2

Modern Peasant Has Gone Fishing
Back online oct. 15

i'm visiting son eli, his wife melissa, grandaughter lily, daughter nicole, husband doug, grandson corbin, and son nathan in chapel hill NC, sister jane, husband fred, nephew jonathan and niece anne in phoenix, my father in prescott AZ, and attending the wedding of my oldest son eric and angela in las vegas.

i've got my gas mask and iodine pills on order, plenty of tape to seal apartment, lots of twinkies and old reader's digests so i am ready for coming extravaganza and hope you are too. see ya.

Monday, September 23, 2002

9..23.2

the question of the day seems to be the nature of the american public. will they buy into the very orchestrated PR swell of war-fever, or surprise the world with a cry for reasonable discourse? chances for the latter seem slim; however the rejection of the clinton impeachment and the rejection of the gingrich revolution are 2 recent instances where the manipulation of public opinion did not work as expected.

let's all stand up and point out the holes and specious logic that can be spotted everyday in the deluge of psuedo-facts bombarding the public.

the mother of all psuedo-facts currently is 9/11 debacle = saddam and even if he was not involved he might be in the future. or maybe it is the confusion between a war against a nation-state and a war against an individual.

on another topic very related: watch out for this one, it will affect your life much more than you might think:

'Doctors also say they fear being hassled by Medicare for billing mistakes from complicated coding procedures. Malpractice insurance doesn't cover Medicare fraud, and Medicare can go after personal assets, Murphy says. "There are almost 30,000 pages of regulations and you are supposed to stay up to date," Murphy says. "It's hard to keep track of them."'
The Daily Camera: Health And Fitness

Saturday, September 21, 2002

9.21.2

every since my mother and exwife died early this year my desire and ability to communicate verbally is pretty non-existent. but i thought i�d post some recent email correspondence between my friend tucker and myself as an example of what people are talking about these exciting days:

----------------------->

From Tucker:

Subject:
I just have to comment about today's EIB broadcast
Date:
Thu, 19 Sep 2002 00:54:14 EDT

Dear Rush Limbaugh;
I am writing to you as your soul brother who was also raised in Cape Giraudeau, Missouri and who periodically checks into WABC for your show to see if anything other than the usual right-wing, Clinton bashing, Republican yahoo, conservative Rants might surface.

I have evolved from seething and pure antipathy I might add . I have quite successfully tried implementing what the Dalai Lama, the Course in Miracles, Thich Nhat Hahn, Jesus so often extol- Being Love and not coming from make wrong, anger, hate etc., but sometimes...
well it still just happens.

It happened today...I couldnt believe the drivel over the Clinton/Letterman appearance and your abhorance of what was a pretty sound exchange; the absolutely humorless Katie Couric award crap--gee Representative Solomom Ortez manages to mumble a stupid question about Iraq to Rumsfeld....so you try to mock his website.

As if your 'solutions' in your inimitable fashion to your listeners concerns about America taking on the role of war maker and not peace maker were any better! Try reading Thomas Friedman or Maureen Doud on the OpEd NY Times today to gild your lilly .

And please stop with baiting the fear of sending our children to war as no concern since we dont have a military draft ( your "dear friend" says it takes a village and we sure are all in a big old American village.)

And yes, we do have 'kitchen table issues' about which your screed today was so even more sophmoric than usuual, that it actually sucked the big one.

Almost as much as your positively ludicrous assertion that "there is no social program that goes unfunded because of war." and as if advertising about Food Stamps was some conservative heresy. I can't believe you havent noticed the toileting of our economy, the 1/4 increase in the defense budget and all that increased homeland security hasnt taken a toll, that bombing Iraq would have to increase even more.

There is some sort of government spending pie that does get parceled out, and keeping our eyes on our paper-tiger Wars on terror, drugs, for homeland security, Saddham, Iran, the Axis of Evil; All that stuff sure keeps us preoccupied so that what you call 'kitchen table' issues which dont appeal to you get a kabash , because even the spineless democrats can't go up against these 'patriotic needs.'

But we can sure get excited about you flitting Dick Cheney -like to unknown parts of Texas and the 2 planes it
takes to move you-- Doesn't Imus just hook up a mike and decent phones at the Imus Ranch?
OK. So mega ditto's to you!!

With so many followers and loyal listeners listening to your exhortations no wonder we are fast becoming a nation of political morons, bankrupt crony capitalists, permanently at wars of the many abstract unwinable kind, like in Brave New World, as we go from surplus to deficit, world loved to dispised by most; a leader in absolutely
nothing benefitting the world (as in Environmental Issues, economic solutions, ways of governing and leading to democracy, Peace and UN and World court issues, fighting disease, poverty and ignorance).

But you can still rant on about Monica, and how the Democrats are doing us in.

Feel proud in your uplifting of America and the World.
Tucker Clark
----------------------------------

In a message dated 9/19/2002 8:43:09 AM Eastern Daylight Time, modpeasant@ioa.com writes:

(IN reference to my letter to LImbaugh to which some of you wrote me, tucker as being an ok response---Chris has it even better --a war would be an outmoded response..I like that! TUCKER)
-----------------------------------

Tucker:
i admire your ability to check in from time to time with ... i don't
know what to call it; politics as entertainment? the syntax of clich�s? high drama as western values go down the tube?

i myself have decided to stand up and talk out loud about all
this...stuff. the very idea of war on terrorism being accepted by john
q. public (remember him?) as a coherent meaningful phrase says it all.

[tucker: yea my man Denzel just played him on a kitchen table subject -- no Health care coverage so take the hospital hostage-alright!]

here's a copy of email i sent to "my" senator [edwards]; the next day i
found out he is warming up for presidential run and therefore had to be
"for" the "war".

[later] i don't have it anymore. but...

i am going to concentrate my pontificating to 3 areas:

1 - saddam is a threat to the world, and the situation does have to be
taken care of. so it is a question of strategy. an obsolete response
would be military invasion in the mode of a high-tech d-day.

2 - even if we won the military war in one day and saddam died, our
troubles would just be beginning. big troubles. world troubles. terminal troubles?

3 - this effort has been "hijacked" by the �republicans� - i prefer
"corporate oligarchy" - just as islam has been hijacked by terrorists - and they carry entirely too much ideological baggage to be trusted to evaluate the situation and make decisions that might work.

how is your world otherwise? what's new?

chris
--------------------------------

thanks for asking Chris and responding--I haven't heard from the newly-slimmed down windbag --but should I expect to? Am letting our tight circle of friends reflect on your thoughts, if it's ok
Love Tuc

Thursday, September 19, 2002

9.19.2

i don't know what to say. mr. dylan says "high water everywhere" and i think he means it. nobody could possibly keep up with the inbred power plays going on in our capital right now. it strikes me that we are fighting a shadow army, ghosts, with the only way we know how, lots of meetings, whispered voices in the halls of power, and anybody with a lick of sense shut out. it used to work.

islam hijacked by terrorists? how about the defense of our people hijacked by the corporate oligarchy with their eternal agenda?

here and there:

remember area 51? well it's still secret, Bush just extended it's status as secret. course he keeps a lot of things secret.
Area 51, truth seekers 0

Freeh's misplaced priorities.
"The threat level grew so high that by December 1998, the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, issued a "declaration of war" on Al Qaeda, in a memorandum circulated in the intelligence community.[not very widely from what i understand]. Yet, Ms. Hill said, the intelligence agencies failed to adequately follow up on the declaration, and by Sept. 10, 2001, the F.B.I. still had only one analyst assigned full time to Al Qaeda."

[and i bet he was exiled to the desk and not invited to social events because of some faux-pas; maybe the wrong color tie].

Whereas Freeh had 85 agents assigned to the continous microscopic inspection of Clinton's zipper. Politics trumps national security?
Metafilter | Community Weblog

9.19.2

May I suggest that rather than bombing civilians in various Muslim countries, the United States and Britain begin to take a more intelligent approach to the international drugs trade: namely, to legalise it. For by doing this, not only will we help solve one of the major problems facing the world today, the unregulated growth of drugs trafficking, but it would also further isolate the terrorists.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Fight terror: legalise the drugs trade

Monday, September 16, 2002

9.16.2

well i don't know about you all, but the media machine is rolling a bit over the line these days. new phrases manifesting every day. "terrorist state" is one. if you are fighting a war against terrorism, then a terrorist state is fair game. like what? well nicaruaga, the phillipines, guatamala, columbia, argintina, isreal have all fit this catagory at one time or another.

now iraq is said to be a "terrorist state". raises the question is it the nation-state of iraq, or it's ruler that we are fixing to fight. and yes, saddam might succeed in nuclear program, and he might slip WMD (new acronym for me since today: weapons of mass...you know) to "sleeper cells" of akaida and diaster could result.

lots of ways to stop this hypothetical possibility without a replay of d-day.

lots of babble, electronic of course. a new phase for urban letgends:
Urban Legends Reference Pages: Rumors of War

another subject: here's an item that probably should be better known. notice particularly verisign.

"Police would not comment on how the Internet criminals managed to hack into either Spitfire's credit card processor, Online Data Corp., of Chicago, or VeriSign Inc., of Mountain View, which secures and processes about 25 percent of all online transactions in the U.S."
Mercury News | 09/16/2002 | Computer thieves ring up $5.07 each on 140,000 credit cards

Sunday, September 15, 2002

9.15.2

autonomic rug
Autonomic Carpet

man i feel like i've been away forever. did the war start while i was gone?

it did.

i think we all know what is happening: the republicans (and the democrats) are daily shifting syntax, re-arrainging rhetoric, the languge of political discourse is a meaningless parody of itself.

the war against terrorism is a war not against a nation-state with a flag, and taxes, and armies. it was decleared against individuals, who tom friedman calls "super-empowered individuals".

it looks like the war will be fought like a high-tech d-day repeat, gulf war redux, massive movements of armies etc.

but a gigantic military attack on iraq is a mismatch because the people who have lived and fought there far longer than we have been a country can dissappear into a world we do not understand.

so i think a new kind of response is called for, something light, tricky, quick, subtle, unexpected. one that is to our advantage in every context.

at the very least, talk about it should be linguistically possible.

Tuesday, September 10, 2002

9.10.2

who...
remember this guy?

well neither do i.

but i did get a quote today:
"memory is imagination pinned down."

imagination, image, flashes from a distant world. where our experience comes from. and goes to.

ps. do not call or visit tommorrow. i will be on a 24 hour media fast. under the bed. no cell phone. maybe some granola.

or i will be eating popcorn in front of the tube, watching the electronic pagentry.

Monday, September 9, 2002

9.9.2

pik8
Pik 8


i'm selecting 12 watercolors that i'll do something with. picture above is number 8.

yesterday i was talking to my father on the telephone, and sometime during the conversation, i said "don't worry, be happy".

he said "that's wierd, at the same time you said that "jeopardy" just showed a new catagory, "don't worry be hopi".

Sunday, September 8, 2002

9.8.2

"But the mourning had barely begun, when the highest leaders of the land unleashed a spirit of revenge. They put out a simplistic script of �good vs. evil� that was taken up by a pliant and intimidated media. They told us that asking why these terrible events had happened verged on treason. There was to be no debate. There were by definition no valid political or moral questions. The only possible answer was to be war abroad and repression at home."
a good source of news without the "official" stamp of approval:
Welcome to ZNet

Saturday, September 7, 2002

9.7.2

regarding president carter"s very lucid and i think correct analysis of our approach to iraq (read yesterday's post), i found a number of comments. it is amazing that most of these seem to treat carter's article as nonsense. if you think the american public is starting to "get it", this may give you pause:
kuro5hin.org || technology and culture, from the trenches

on the other hand some do get it:

"On this latter point we can turn to Merle Haggard, the bard of blue collar America, the man who saluted the American flag more than a generation ago in songs such as "The Fighting Side of Me" and "Okie from Muskogee." Haggard addressed a concert crowd in Kansas City, Mo., a few days ago in the following terms: "I think we should give John Ashcroft a big hand ... (pause) ... right in the mouth!" He went on to say, "the way things are going, I'll probably be thrown in jail tomorrow for saying that, so I hope ya'll will bail me out."
www.workingforchange.com

keep up with scattered oppisition to the coming techno-drama:
Antiwar.com

Friday, September 6, 2002

9.6.2

put another muzak up. i did it nite before last. today i went to the mall. i'm getting used to it. it didn't even seem strange.

so i'm sitting here at home trying to conjure up a letter to sen. edwards about the war against terrorism when i get the following email:

"This letter should be published in every newspaper in America. If there is a way to bring it to the attention of your media, congresspeople, and other groups, please let them know about it.

washingtonpost.com The Troubling New Face of America By Jimmy Carter

Thursday, September 5, 2002; Page A31

Fundamental changes are taking place in the historical policies of the United States with regard to human rights, our role in the community of nations and the Middle East peace process -- largely without definitive debates (except, at times, within the administration). Some new approaches have understandably evolved from quick and well-advised reactions by President Bush to the tragedy of Sept. 11, but others seem to be developing from a core group of conservatives who are trying to realize long-pent-up ambitions under the cover of the proclaimed war against terrorism.

Formerly admired almost universally as the preeminent champion of human rights, our country has become the foremost target of respected international organizations concerned about these basic principles of democratic life. We have ignored or condoned abuses in nations that support our anti-terrorism effort, while detaining American citizens as "enemy combatants," incarcerating them secretly and indefinitely without their being charged with any crime or having the right to legal counsel. This policy has been condemned by the federal courts, but the Justice Department seems adamant, and the issue is still in doubt. Several hundred captured Taliban soldiers remain imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay under the same circumstances, with the defense secretary declaring that they would not be released even if they were someday tried and found to be innocent. These actions are similar to those of abusive regimes that historically have been condemned by American presidents.

While the president has reserved judgment, the American people are inundated almost daily with claims from the vice president and other top officials that we face a devastating threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and with pledges to remove Saddam Hussein from office, with or without support from any allies. As has been emphasized vigorously by foreign allies and by responsible leaders of former administrations and incumbent officeholders, there is no current danger to the United States from Baghdad. In the face of intense monitoring and overwhelming American military superiority, any belligerent move by Hussein against a neighbor, even the smallest nuclear test (necessary before weapons construction), a tangible threat to use a weapon of mass destruction, or sharing this technology with terrorist organizations would be suicidal. But it is quite possible that such weapons would be used against Israel or our forces in response to an American attack.

We cannot ignore the development of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, but a unilateral war with Iraq is not the answer. There is an urgent need for U.N. action to force unrestricted inspections in Iraq. But perhaps deliberately so, this has become less likely as we alienate our necessary allies. Apparently disagreeing with the president and secretary of state, in fact, the vice president has now discounted this goal as a desirable option.

We have thrown down counterproductive gauntlets to the rest of the world, disavowing U.S. commitments to laboriously negotiated international accords. Peremptory rejections of nuclear arms agreements, the biological weapons convention, environmental protection, anti-torture proposals, and punishment of war criminals have sometimes been combined with economic threats against those who might disagree with us. These unilateral acts and assertions increasingly isolate the United States from the very nations needed to join in combating terrorism.

Tragically, our government is abandoning any sponsorship of substantive negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. Our apparent policy is to support almost every Israeli action in the occupied territories and to condemn and isolate the Palestinians as blanket targets of our war on terrorism, while Israeli settlements expand and Palestinian enclaves shrink.

There still seems to be a struggle within the administration over defining a comprehensible Middle East policy. The president's clear commitments to honor key U.N. resolutions and to support the establishment of a Palestinian state have been substantially negated by statements of the defense secretary that in his lifetime "there will be some sort of an entity that will be established" and his reference to the "so-called occupation." This indicates a radical departure from policies of every administration since 1967, always based on the withdrawal of Israel from occupied territories and a genuine peace between Israelis and their neighbors.

Belligerent and divisive voices now seem to be dominant in Washington, but they do not yet reflect final decisions of the president, Congress or the courts. It is crucial that the historical and well-founded American commitments prevail: to peace, justice, human rights, the environment and international cooperation.

Former president Carter is chairman of the Carter Center in Atlanta. � 2002 The Washington Post Company"

AMEN

Wednesday, September 4, 2002

9.4.2

i finally fixed the box at upper right that links to my latest obsession, digital sound. fooling with blog templates can be dangerous.

i've been otherwise engaged lately, so the verbage of this weblog has slowly been evaporating.

but the iraqi war choreography has become really disturbing, so now i've got a bee in my bonnet and can write away.

is there a problem this war might solve?


i believe there is a problem, pretty much as the current bunch says. i think bush will release some information sept 12 when he talks to the UN.

but i don�t think a traditional war will solve this problem. there are all kinds of other, smarter ways.

why this war is a bad idea:


1 - but even if we won it in one day, the iraqui gov. surrendered, and mr hussein died somehow, our difficulties would just be beginning.

because we are not equiped to deal with arabic-speaking countries. very few arab speakers, people who were born and raised in that part of the world and understand it.

halbersteim�s book �the best and the brightest� outlines a similar situation before we became involved in the vietnam war. the state department had been gutted of people who knew that world. there were many smart people who had been born and raised in china and they all were dismissed during the finger pointing era of �who lost china�. after that our govt. didn�t have a clue.


more tommorrow.

Friday, August 30, 2002

8.30.2

"This is in line with the ideas of the nineteenth-century German idealists such as Schelling and Hegel and the Indian philosopher Sri Aurobindo in this last century, who felt that spirit or divinity has involved itself in the universe from the very beginning and that it is gradually and sometimes fitfully manifesting itself through a process we call evolution."
from
What Is Enlightenment? Book Reviews
george leonard.

Thursday, August 29, 2002

8.29.2

Happy Birthday Jane


well this is getting ridiculous. the current political situation. i tried to keep my mouth shut and just paint. didn't work.

i think mr. hussein is a danger in our world today. but there are ways to handle this danger besides neo-war.

personally i think that the corporate oligarchy that has been building for years is by far a bigger danger. with their control of the language and discourse, electronic bread and circuses, specious logic and mega-money i don't know how they can be stopped or even deflected. except by lots of people.

"The current incumbents in Washington are at an extreme of reactionary jingoism and contempt for democracy. The question we should ask, I think, is how far citizens will allow them to pursue their agendas."

Amen.
ZNet | Interviews | Chomsky Interview

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

8.28.2

every week

i've been updating this weblog every day for over a year. i'm going to start skipping a day every now and then so my mind doesn't resemble the above drawing.

i'll catch up the image archive page so it includes the last 4 weeks or so pictures. i'll also be converting the MP3's to q design codec QT movies which should result in a file size reduction so dialup modem folks can download easily. and lastly i'll be changing ISPs in a month or so.

as elvis used to say, "takin care of bizness".

Sunday, August 25, 2002

8.25.2

quiet sunday around the ranch, just woke up from short doze. got an oil painting started, first one i've ever attempted.

here's something i jotted down. i was hoping it was going to turn into a country & western song, but naaah, i don't think so:

someday maybe i'll feel new
but these days those days are mighty few
the sky leaves clouds like a clue
hangs question marks in the blue

atmospheric ice-crystals are cold
artificial memories i've been told
pathways lost in wars so old
plans of life bought and sold

Wednesday, August 21, 2002

8.21.2

pik7
no. 7 of 12 for top-secret hypomaniacal notecard project


there is a foreign car repair shop in town i often pass. they have cutsey sayings displayed on a large display. today i saw the first one i liked and will adopt it for whatever obscure use i can find for it:

"i feel like i am parked diagonally in a parallel universe"

Monday, August 19, 2002

8.19.2

they just keep coming
number 6 for skunkworks notecard project


now we (our nation-state) are bombarding all of the seas with mega-sonar that destroys sea-life. the lack of public response to the oligarchic cabal that runs things is quite amazing. but then maybe there is no "public". just consumers.

i'm trying to use watercolors on a plastic material called "yupo". it's the closest thing to fingerpaints i've used in a long long time.

Sunday, August 18, 2002

8.18.2

the song i have been remembering the most - "i'm not talking - thaaaaat's what i've got to say". yardbirds first album i think.

cause i have nothing to say.we live in a time of institutional decay and the only thing that might stop the coming "drama" of big money, oil, corporate oligarchy and world-wide electronic pt barnum is if everybody went to sleep tonight and woke up realizing that they have been touched by the hand of god. or something. maybe day after tommorrow might not be too late.

otherwise i'm gonna keep painting and doing like i did today, sampled charley mingus, looped a bunch of bits, added effects and played it backwards. no hidden message but you can dance to it.

Saturday, August 17, 2002

8.17.2

a change
something a little different


I am trying to throttle back and at the same time bring some projects to completion. realizing how pushed i feel - roll with it i guess.

Friday, August 16, 2002

8.16.2

pik5
today's piece for project notecard

another day inside the moonship. various things lurching forward, maybe a few taking a timeout here and there.

lots of visitors the last few weeks - ninian, doug, hearing from various old friends via email. took me all day to finish 10 minutes of "music".

Thursday, August 15, 2002

8.15.2

coldmnt.pik4

i may use this for famous notecard project. i may do something else with it. i might even do both.

[publishing techno problems at blogger kept this post from appearing for a day or 2]

Wednesday, August 14, 2002

8.14.2

toxic haze hovering over southern Asia. i can remember landing in an airplane several times in asia when you could smell the earth at about 6,000 feet. it didn't smell like chemicals.
Early warning on Asia's toxic haze

number 3 image to be a part of obscure notecard project. if i can scan one a day which i can because i am, save for print and then spin-off the jpeg that you see, it's a good production rhythm for me.

pik6.3

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

8.13.2

"Brooks minted the title for the film, "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control", a phrase he uses to describe his philosophy for creating robots."
Slashdot | Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us

here is 2nd watercolor i will work with in anticipatory hypothetical notecard project.

pik2

Monday, August 12, 2002

8.12.2

pik1

had a faaast monday. the digital audio thing has worked out so that in order to use it i have to constantly finish stuff, meaning i create an MP3 and delete all of the audio files i used to mix it. disk. space. picture above is the first of 12 that i am trying to work up for note card project.

Friday, August 9, 2002

8.9.2

well i have been fooling with FTP path settings so i can blog away again. and think i got it now. my heart wasn't in it, so i just sort of pecked away at it rather than obligatory adrenalized teeth-clenching techno-marathon. hope it's fixed.

it's not.

[later] now it is.

and here is a picture to prove it [Later still:don't like this watercolor: am going to change it in rare backdated move. you'll see.]

piK6

Wednesday, August 7, 2002

8.7.2

up at 4:30 this morning. i really enjoy the days when this happens. i get real busy.

here's todays thingy: at least i hope it is here, some problem with transmission from blogger to my site. [many hours later]. just got back. this webpage does not exist yet. i"ll tinker more. keeps me off the streets. so if you don't see this it's not here.[still later] there is a techno-glitch somewhere. but i've been trying to post this since tuesday.

today's thingy

Monday, August 5, 2002

8.5.2

"Brock Enright, an artist and entrepreneur in New York City, has an offer for you. For a few thousand US dollars, he and some co-workers of his come when you least expect it and kidnap you, holding you hostage for up to a few days. You even get videos of the event detailing your ordeal as his company does their best to make you feel like a real hostage..."
Plastic: Being Abducted For Fun And Fulfillment

i was reminded by this item of an alarming trend that has been growing for a few years in our culture. i don't know what to call it, but here are some examples:

1) theme parks
2) reality tv (oxymoron)
3) micheal moore's idea to make trent mich into a theme park
4) my cousin bob's and my idea about 15 years ago to start a business that charged middle-class people a fee for putting them "homeless" on the street for awhile.
5) book i read awhile back where idea was to build "sinful" environments, for example gangster run las vegas, where customers could visit but was perfectly safe.

what is this trend? sanitized experience? it's all make-believe anyway? we've gotten to the point where experience without cash payment doesn't feel "real"? nothing feels real? nothing is real?

Sunday, August 4, 2002

8.4.2

good place to hang out:
( blogdex )

where you can find news (if it doesn't find you first.):
"Friendly fire deaths linked to US pilots 'on speed'"

Saturday, August 3, 2002

8.3.2

fresh
another one a day

Friday, August 2, 2002

8.2.2

you can install a "get a (random") blog" from this page. it will take you to a random blog somewhere. why? i don't know.

i feel the need to outline what i think: probably because i have been immersed in music, no writing. so here goes:

1) humans are concious. trees, snakes, apples are not. altho the cartesian split ("i think, therefor i exist, but trees don't, so they don't") has been found to be lacking in it's catagories of what is and what isn't.

2) the objects of human conciousness are a little tricky, because they are not what they seem. (don't believe everything you think.)

3) conciousness seems to be a small part of a bigger entity, the unconciousness. it would not matter except the latter pushes us around into postures we had not planned to be in.

4) conciousness (and unconciousness) creates culture, and the collective that goes under that name feeds back and defines ego conciousness. that is, it effects the experience of being a person. this experience is different in different times and places.

5) the subject of conciousness (the "I") is therefore contingent, a handy device. what exactly this "really" is will be a subject of great debate in the near future. because when you come to a fork in the road, take it.

6) working on the last point is the core of the answer to many of our social, economic. and political perplexities.

7) therefor today, problems can only be solved on the personal level. the corporate oligarchic flavor of reality is replacing the personal with the commercial, so better hurry.

Thursday, August 1, 2002

8.1.2

i just put up 6 mp3s here. mp3s are still a long download for someone in the stone age like me, but the sound quality i think is really good.

Wednesday, July 31, 2002

7.31.2

Osama bin Laden: is he is or is he ain't?

"the suspected terrorist mastermind will appear in a taped recording . . . they also said bin Laden was well."
Today's Daily Briefing -- The Heritage Foundation

"Sources believe that if the bodyguards were captured away from bin Laden, it is likely the most-wanted man in the world is dead."
CNN.com - Sources: No bodyguards, no bin Laden - July 30, 2002

Tuesday, July 30, 2002

7.30.2

here comes another one...
an old one.

Monday, July 29, 2002

7.29.2

Breaking this law--even if it's to share music by your own garage band--could land you in prison for up to five years. And that's not counting the civil penalties of up to $25,000 per offense.
from
Pirate this, go to jail - Tech News - CNET.com

7.29.2

"WASHINGTON--Congress is about to consider an entertainment industry proposal that would authorize copyright holders to disable PCs used for illicit file trading."

read this. i don't think it has a chance in hell of becoming law at this point, but in a few years or less?

Sunday, July 28, 2002

7.28.2

friend ninian dropped by with lots of banjo's, fresh from a musical learning week at warren wilson.

it was so hot so long we stayed indoors, visited, played some, listened to tape of dylan playing winston-salem last march.

i demoed my latest hobby horse, mp3s made with opcode oms, vision DSP and Vision Pro, also using soundedit 16 and SndSampler, quicktime voices and some editing in quicktime audio, lots of VST filters, a good mike with line outout adapter for mike in on G3, and midi keyboard Roland D20. all this stuff is at least a generation behind today, but i find it strangely fascinating to make this stuff work together. and it can do so much more than the last time i played with this stuff, 10+ years ago.

Later this week i'll put up about 5-10 pieces and you can judge for yourself. i consider these to be potential soundtracks and they are all works in progress.

meanwhile figuring out away to add small economical visuals to quicktime midi or movie files (audio).

lately haven't had the urge to ponificate. i don't know what to say. i am aghast not just at what is going on in the privilaged domain of the rich and powerful (R & P), but even worse, the so-far lack of any reaction to it from the pipple. there are at least 2 things that might be contributing to this lack.

one is business as usual, same old thying, began with reagun when the blue collar folks especially SE bought into the picture and from then on acted as if they were future candidates for this elevated standard. in theory. and it is still happening in a mutated way i guess.before this phase pipple wanted to be rock and roll stars.

or 2) the discomfort and unease of living in the whole picture, time, speed, confused identidies, loose numbers careening around the place, where does a trillion million go? where does it come from?

ninian opines that 9/11 in some way shook all this stuff loose. maybe. for sure it is affecting a whole lot more people than the early-adapters-misfits. i think more and more folks will be ruminating on how to get off the wheel of work. personal downsizing, part time employment, shared living expenses, it's a movement..and there is no one size fits-all solution.

if the latter is what is happening it will be cool - just very quietly folks slipping away.

and the war (now that i'm going i'll ride it down, i'll write it down). war against terrorists. war against drugs. war against cancer. these are not the recent 2-300 years of what war was; that was btween 2 institutions (flags, maps, uniforms, conscription, but civilians progressively incorporated into the show, wwii air marshall tedder began satuation bombing of german cities.).

war against the formless is a whole new thing and the ongoing shutdown of govt. procedures, plus the secrecy, is often part of the wars against the evil invisible.

7.28t00.2

dunno aboout this one...
one a day keeps the doctor away.

Friday, July 26, 2002

7.26.2

in the past, since WWII, the word "fascist" has usually been used in an overblown, over the top manner, especially when criticizing the US guvmnt. that's changing.

"Don't be alarmed by the word fascist. It's a term that is used for mindless respect for authority and uniforms, oppression, use of force, nationalism.

Whenever I'm in the USA, I see this all around me."
from
Plastic:

Thursday, July 25, 2002

7.25.2

one a day
one a day keeps the doctor away

Wednesday, July 24, 2002

7.24.2

an interesting stop on the cyber byway.
Fresh Art Text

Monday, July 22, 2002

7.22.2

this is what i want to do when i grow up. amazing. let it do it's thing, have fun.
snarg

Sunday, July 21, 2002

7.21.2

"He argues that the marketers do more than mirror the splits in the American social fabric, they accentuate them by designing media and advertisments that encourage contact between the narrow marketing segments and discourage those from outside the segment from coming in contact with the customized media using "signaling" and "branding" techniques."
from turow

7.21.2

i pruned my overwhelming number of bookmarks today and looked around to see what they were. a lot had disappeared into the cyber-ozone. Newcity was still around. check out the dick cheney piece:

"And for the first time, there were some faint signs the cows might be coming home to roost. Polls showed that the issue was beginning to stir the public, some of whom were starting to make vague connections between the corruption of Bush�s corporate pals and the fact that their nest eggs had been wiped out."

Saturday, July 20, 2002

7.20.2

july 02 watercolor
latest watercolor, finished yesterday

still don't have much to say about current war situation. massive reorganization of any institutional flow chart including federal govt. seems beside the point. the bizness metaphore that has invaded all aspects of our culture may be imploding, but the greed, dishonesty, and use of power to solve all problems has been around a long time, obvious to all, with no reaction from the populice except to ape the "biz" style and mode. the coming election will be interesting: my prediction: democrats lose, wheeler dealers, oligarchs, financial aristocrats win despite present unraveling.

a lot of my "ilk" have maintained an interest in ancient history during our short stay on the planet, despite it's disappearence as part of popular culture. this is a very full site you might want to bookmark and browse:
Ancient Classical History

Friday, July 19, 2002

7.19.2

a lot of nooks and crannies featuring various creative endeavors in various stages of completion and/or confusion. can you relate? i can.
artnetweb HOME

Thursday, July 18, 2002

7.18.2

the FBI is checking out library patrons and what they have been reading. no information will come of this misguided and unamerican activity, only noise, thank god. more files somewhere. maybe some of them will wonder into the stacks and pick up a book or two. who knows?
Zara Gelsey: Who's Reading Over Your Shoulder?

you've got to logon to this site, but the breadth of the reportage and the detail of current inanities is mind-blowing, no matter how bad you think our current "situation" is, you ain't seen nothing yet.
kuro5hin.org || technology and culture, from the trenches

Wednesday, July 17, 2002

7.17.2

things i've learned in the past couple of days:

the army spent 10 days recently investigating an enlisted man who called our president "a joke" in a letter to the editor in a newspaper.

in the world of academia, there are courses taught with titles like "transpersonal psychology", "conciousness", and "introduction to tibetan buddhism". maybe some of the extra-curricular activities of 40 years ago had more of an effect than i realized. i thought the only result was the reagan revolution. i wonder what goes on in these classes; are there questions like "will that be on the test?"?

the culture is in denial about the changing climate.

the next 20 years will see the largest migration of peoples worldwide in history (and prehistory).

it's an open question whether the turn against bizzness will translate into realization that we are living in disney themepark. pay your money, stand in line, get thrilled/tittalatted/adrenalized, feel proud you did it.

systems cannot save the system. there is a feeling of dread in the air (not to mention tangible pollution in the smokey mountains), everyone feels it, nobody knows what to do about it.

"crypto-fascisism", an offhand phrase coined i believe by gore vidal, may enter the lexicon. but it will be spoken very quietly. "star-chamber" may creep in too.

people are alarmed by the invasion of privacy, but the demise of the inner concious life has not hit home yet. there is no privacy to invade where there is no inner life.

it's been a couple of days like that.

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

7.16.2

A collection of good-looking websites that are built with minimalism in mind. Spare, sparse, elegant. Fast-loading. Good idea:
Textbased.com - minimalist web design, theory and discussions

"New York and Milpitas, Calif.-based Nielsen//NetRatings also found Mac users are 58 percent more likely than the average surfer to build Web pages and 53 percent more likely to seek out product reviews.

"The Apple elite also have a higher propensity to purchase online than the average surfer, with the most popular purchases falling into the computer hardware, software and music categories.

"On the other hand, Mac owners are less likely to read horoscopes online or play any kind of online game."
enuf said. from
Mac Users Rule Says Study

Monday, July 15, 2002

7.15.2

haven't posted in a day or so, i must have taken a few bad turns. so here:

forest for the trees

Saturday, July 13, 2002

7.13.2

This is a book i did the cover for, newly published. it is also a good read about a time and place that have slipped away.

Golden Thread


to buy the book send a check or money order for $14.00 ($12 plus $2.00 shipping and handling) to:

barbara scott
481 Turkey Ford Rd,
Dobson, NC 27017.

it will be available at select bookstores and a website soon. i'll post these when it happens.

Friday, July 12, 2002

7.12.2

i've spent a lot of time lately lost in the wilderness of digital audio production. here's my first MP3: give it a listen and have fun wondering what the hell i am doing.

Thursday, July 11, 2002

7.11.2

a conversation the other night i had with richard about the nature of the workplace started me looking for an article i found many years ago in a short-lived magazine, don't remember the name. i found it and link is below. amazingly prescient for it's time, all i remember about the author is that he was not some kid, but worked in the technical field. this is my favorite article of all time, read it.

"Directly or indirectly, work will kill most of the people who read these words."
from
The Abolition of Work

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

shhh...

Tuesday, July 9, 2002

starter went out on truck, delayed malfunction from a few months ago when i broke down in son eli's boondok house i think. meanwhile more flowers:

more flowers

Monday, July 8, 2002

i've been so unverbal lately. politics, the economy, the corporate oligarchy, the changing mental-world (no, not mental-ward) that we inhabit, they all seem pretty distant. i've been painting flowers.

lost flowers of the mind decay

Saturday, July 6, 2002

fat band people, poke around in this: the head-space project : v5

Friday, July 5, 2002

blogger is down, don't know when this will appear. BUT i had a very nice 4th, potluck at the reily's, thank you tom and cathy. plus when i got back no fireworks extravaganza at the grove park inn, thank you whomever.

at the library today, due to lack of funds they can't purchase "shaky", neil young bio i'll read one of these days.

about the corporate oligarchy we live in today: it's new, it's different, and it works because the public buys into it (literally) because they get something in return. like the 9th century serf who got something in return. "Feudal lords protect underlings in exchange for obedience and labor. The basis of feudal empires --power and glory" from A Shambhala Interview with Ken Wilber.

what we get today is the illusion or hope that we can be "our own boss", plus glitter, glitz, and adrenalin. in exchange for a world where there is "no room to be anybody" (bob dylan).

the 2 g. bushes and laura are on the cover of "the nation" this week wearing crowns.

Wednesday, July 3, 2002

early morning thunder outside, i guess i'll shut this thing down soon. here's is a noble weblog experiment i stumbled on, lot's of potential implications. i guess it's necessary but not sure why.
RAM otherwise known as Random Access Memory. lives up to it's title. could probably use a javascript button that randomly grabs and displays a content selection.

Tuesday, July 2, 2002

really frustrating day. working on a watercolor that is just not going anywhere, but i gotta go with it. then long hours twitching midi software, getting down to kinks and bizarre crashes, self-generated sequences combined with aliatory audio tracks. fascinating stuff but i think i better step away for a day or two. pleasant phone call from friend jim, the only voice i heard all day. until this evening when i got out of the house and attended a small discussion group concerning the work of ken wilber who nobody can understand. pleasant interesting bunch of folks, thanks richard.

if you are curious why noone understands wilber, try this. the interesting thing seems to be that somewhere in there he is articulating something many of us feel but have not figured out how to say - because we don't know what it is.

"Moreover, for the last several decades, the various Third World groups, factions, insurrectionists, and even terrorists have actually adopted the postmodernist lingo coming out of American universities in order to justify their actions. Green pluralism maintains, in its extreme--and most common--forms, that culturally there is no good or bad, no better or worse: there are no universal standards by which we may judge one culture to be better or worse than another. In fact, we cannot say anything about an Other that the Other would not say about itself. Period. To attempt to speak of the Other in terms other than those of the Other is to commit a horrible crime known as a 'metanarrative.' Rather, all cultural values are essentially equal..."

from
Ken Wilber Online: A Summary of Integral Psychology

Monday, July 1, 2002

"Great art suspends the reverted eye, the lamented past, the anticipated future; we enter it with the timeless present; we are with God today, perfect in our manner and mode, open to the riches and the glories of a realm that time forgot, but that great art reminds us of: not by it's content, but by what it does in us: suspends the desire to be elsewhere."

-- The Eye of Spirit, p. 135-136
The world of Ken Wilber

Saturday, June 29, 2002

"Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Kanter, in her book World Class, tells us that the future belongs to those who are willing to give up their loyalties to community and nation to seek personal financial success in the global economy. She warns that those who remain loyal to people and places will be left behind."

that's what i'm afraid of.

from
cj guidebook citation

i wish i could comment on the politics of the day, but words fail me. a populice ruled by corporate oligarchy almost totally involved with electronic bread and circuses and easy ignorence. the biggest problem i see is the acceptance of the status quo and the need not to know. the only faint hope is, it seems to me, the slowly increasing visceral discomfort people are beginning to feel. feeling, not thinking. as if there is...something wrong.

Friday, June 28, 2002

"this i want to give to you because i wrote it down this morning. [he laughs as i read the the paper he hands me.]

judge me not by the number of times i have failed, but by the nunber of times i have succeeded, which is in direct proportion to the number of times i've failed and kept on trying."

from
Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith
by Studs Terkel

Thursday, June 27, 2002








happy birthday erichappy birthday nicole

Happy Birthday Eric & Nicole

Tuesday, June 25, 2002

nother pome. song? chosen at random.

Since I fell
Through empty air
I can't tell
Here from there

We need to talk
From then to now
While we Walk
Tell me how.

Monday, June 24, 2002

email fowarded by a friend of a friend of a friend:

In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft
error messages with Haiku poetry messages. Haiku poetry has strict
construction rules - each poem has only 17 syllables; 5 syllables in the first, 7 in the second, 5 in the third. They are used to communicate a timeless message, often achieving a wistful, yearning and powerful insight through extreme brevity. Here are 16 actual error messages from Japan.

Below, the essence of Zen:
---------------------------------------------------
Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
-------------------------------------------
The Web site you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.
-------------------------------------------
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
-----------------------------------------------
Program aborting:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.
------------------------------------------------
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
--------------------------------------------------
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
---------------------------------------------------
First snow, then silence.
This thousand-dollar screen dies
So beautifully.
---------------------------------------------------
With searching comes loss
And the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.
--------------------------------------------------
The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao- until
You bring fresh toner.
--------------------------------------------------
Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.
---------------------------------------------------
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.
--------------------------------------------------
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
---------------------------------------------------
You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
---------------------------------------------------
Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.
------------------------------------------------
Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.
---------------------------------------------------
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
---------------------------------------------------